Digital Curation syllabi now online

Syllabi are now online for the four core courses of the University of Maine’s brand new Digital Curation program. These include online classes in digital acquisition (DIG 500), representation (DIG 510), access (DIG 540), and preservation (DIG 550).

Digital Curation is a graduate certificate that offers online training to anyone who works with digital files, whether in an archive, museum, library, office, or studio.

Starting this September is the first course, Introduction to Digital Curation (DIG 500), which is both an introduction to essential concepts in the field and a practicum in the first phase of the curation workflow, namely the acquisition of digital files. You can find an interactive syllabus here.

Basic syllabi are also online for two courses starting in January 2013. DIG 510 (Metadata) surveys current standards for describing and encoding artifacts in terms that aid their future discovery or preservation–from Dublin Core to OAI to RDF. Syllabus here.

Also launching this spring is DIG 550 (Digital Preservation), a course that acquaints students with the challenges of, and best practices for, preserving digital artifacts. These include preservation strategies such as storage, migration, emulation, and reinterpretation. Syllabus here.

Scheduled for fall 2013 is DIG 540 (Digital Collections and Exhibitions), which covers the technical means and social consequences of assembling and sharing cultural digitally, including the structure of relational databases, PHP, and Content Management Systems such as Omeka. Syllabus here.

Apart from these four courses, the certificate also includes an digital curation elective and an internship that can take place in the student’s own workplace. For more information or to register for upcoming courses, visit DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu